One of the best characters ever created for the silver screen is now one of the most despised actors in the view of the right wing nuts of this country. Sean Penn may be a lot of things, but a bad actor he never was. Don't let the stoner dude demeanor fool you. Spicoli is one of the most calculated moves that he made in his entire career. Many of the co-stars of the film say that Penn refused to talk to anyone unless he was in character. So no more wondering why people still quote him 25 years after the movie was first released.

FAST TIMES AT RIDGEMONT HIGH also benefits from the deft writing hand of Cameron Crowe, the man better known for movies like JERRY MAGUIRE and ALMOST FAMOUS. Crowe has been around for years, starting as a teenager who wrote for the magazine Rolling Stone. He was able to take some of the firsthand knowledge that he'd gotten from visiting high schools around the nation as a young reporter and put together a movie which stands to be one of the bravest ever made about teenagers to date.

There is sex, there is masturbation, there are all kinds of jokes which would have played out at simple and lowbrow. However, there is also an undercurrent of pain that most people fail to recognize when making a movie about young people. High school wasn't all fun and games, if you recall. Watching FAST TIMES AT RIDGEMONT HIGH will probably make you cringe with its realism at times. It's what makes it the classic that it is.

You are totally correct about the realism of this flick. I was a senior in high school when it came out and, except for some of the lingo being a bit different from California to Texas, it certainly portrayed all the crappiness and all the happiness of my life. (And I had never even smoked weed!) Spicoli is still my hero.